About Me

I used to work with the Cat Welfare Society for 6 years and really enjoyed my time working with them. I am now taking a break but will continue to blog about cats and other related information! Any views here do not represent the views of CWS.

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Tuesday, June 06, 2006

Enabling

There are some very kind hearted people out there who try their best to help feeders with their cats. They are often approached for money by feeders who tell them that the cats won't eat if they have no money. These people then buy food and often pay for medical treatment or sterilisation as well.

What happens though is that some of these feeders misuse this by taking advantage of their generosity. One woman I spoke to today has been buying food for another feeder - this feeder then proceeds to litter through the estate. The woman will scold her about littering and the feeder will threaten not to feed anymore.

One woman needed help with sterilisation quite a few years ago. Many people wrote in to offer to help or to adopt the cats. She had taken a lot of cats in and we agreed at the time to help her with sterilisation costs on the condition that she not take in any more cats. After a while, we noticed that we had already sterilised the number of cats that we had counted were unsterilised and she was still sending cats in for sterilisation. I called her and it turned out she was still picking cats up. We stopped offering her additional money for sterilisation. Last I heard someone else is supplying her with food and money and she was still picking up cats.

Sometimes by NOT helping these people, it actually helps the cats. If for example, someone keeps taking cats in and you keep supplying them with food or medical costs, they may continue picking up MORE cats. This does often is very bad news for the existing cats because it is likely at best to stress them out, and at worst, to bring in disease.

Same with the woman feeding the cats - with more food, she expands her feeding area. If she fed a smaller area, perhaps she might keep it cleaner. Better still, provide the food to someone else responsible - who will feed responsibly and sterilise.